While experts largely agree on the definition of economic empowerment — a woman’s ability to make decisions about her own financial well-being — there is growing contention about the way we measure it.

Last month, eight of America’s largest international relief organizations — including CARE, International Medical Corps, International Rescue Committee, Mercy Corps, Oxfam, Plan International, Save the Children and World Vision along with partners Google, PepsiCo, Visa, and Twitter — launched a collective fundraising and awareness campaign, the Global Emergency Response Coalition.

With a Foreign Assistance Act that has not been overhauled since its enactment nearly 60 years ago and the administration’s redesign process for State and USAID well under way, the United States’ aid architecture is in dire need of bold ideas and creative solutions.

Eight U.S.-based international relief groups have joined forces to desperately urge the public to donate to a new relief fund aimed at addressing looming famine and hunger in South Sudan, Nigeria, Yemen, Somalia and neighboring nations.

Eight international nongovernmental organizations are hoping that their unprecedented partnership will help draw attention and funds for the famine-like conditions endangering more than 20 million people across the globe.

The Global Emergency Response Coalition will use donations to the Hunger Relief Fund to bring much-needed food and supplies to those affected by the famine in Africa, and lay the groundwork for recovery.

Gender experts at leading international development and humanitarian organizations are cutting across professional boundaries to show how institutions can foster gender equality internally — and ultimately improve development outcomes.

Times are changing for the girls of Kenya. On Wednesday, the country made history when President Uhuru Kenyatta signed a law into place ensuring that each public school will provide free sanitary pads to students who have their period.

Here are 10 strategic trends that demonstrate how the field is grappling with a new era in girls’ education, as well as potential gaps in the effort, and opportunities for action that those gaps present.

Plan's Because I am a Girl initiative highlights the magnitude of the issues faced by the least empowered people on the globe: girls. It works to create space and resource for girls to have a fighting chance, to see themselves through to a better tomorrow.

Bangladesh’s Parliament softened its landmark law against underage marriage on Monday, a move that human rights activists say could roll back the country’s decades-long campaign to curtail teenage pregnancy and maternal and infant mortality.

Despite banning female genital mutilation in 2007, Egypt has among the highest rates of FGM in the world. Plan International works alongside some of the girls, men, and women fighting FGM across the country.

At the center of the events around 2016 are global development leaders like Plan International USA CEO Tessie San Martin, whose spoken words have inspired, provoked, or helped us think differently about development and humanitarian work.

Plan International's Because I am a Girl Ambassador, Freida Pinto, reflects on previous visits to Morocco and Liberia where she met with girls who were confronting the barriers that were preventing them from receving an education.

International Day of the Girl is being celebrated with a historic #GirlsTakeover, in which more than 250 girls will step into the shoes of leaders in politics, economics, and society across 50 countries.

On International Day of the Girl, girls are demonstrating their ability to change the world. Yet more needs to be done to make all girls visible, including gathering meaningful data about their lives, writes Plan International’s Zahra Sethna.

Millions of girls are left "invisible" because of a lack of data and the absence of accurate statistics on issues such as sexual violence means policymakers cannot draw up effective plans to help them.

Once relegated to fringe conversations, gender data saw its name printed on agendas at Women Deliver 2016 and its quantitative and qualitative potential uttered aloud and debated by small startups and donors alike.

In Benin, when children fall sick, their parents often turn to voodoo. The West African nation is, after all, its spiritual home. Officially a state religion since 1996, Voodooism is practiced by 17 percent of the population, with many outside of the religion professing a cultural link to some of its rituals.

The lives of millions of girls giving birth under the age of 15 are at risk because they are slipping through the net of the system, Anne-Birgitte Albrectsen, the new head of child rights organization Plan International, said on Tuesday.

Successfully working at scale means planning for scale from the beginning and understanding “what works” in program design and implementation. Jan Willem Rosenboom, a senior program officer in the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Strategy for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, points out that while acting on observations seems conceptually simple, it is harder in practice.

A new publication, produced by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security in partnership with Plan International USA, highlights the important role that reconstruction assistance plays in supporting women and building upon their wartime resiliency in order to capitalize on these new roles and aid in defining the post-conflict environment.

The Ebola outbreak has passed, but the girls who have been left behind must face a new set of obstacles: the loss of family and financial security, teen pregnancy, and academic pressures and social stigmas.

In a guest blog post on PlanUSA.org titled "My Daughter," Headey wrote that she will be fighting for women's rights in developing countries so that women abroad can enjoy the same rights she and her future daughter have.

The actress — who is due to give birth to her second child in just a few weeks — has spoken up about what she hopes her baby daughter’s life will be like, and her words are honestly so awesome that they might make you cry.

Supermodel Toni Garrn may be busy walking catwalks, but she’s also busy raising money for a great cause. Garrn organized a clothing sale event in the middle of New York Fashion Week to support PLAN International, an organization dedicated to funding girls’ and women’s education in Burkina Faso, Africa.

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